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PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL
SITTING AT
NUREMBERG, GERMANY
FIRST DAY
TUESDAY, 20TH NOVEMBER, 1945
THE PRESIDENT : Before the defendants in this case are
called upon to make their pleas to the indictment which has
been lodged against them, and in which they are charged with
Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against
Humanity, and with a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit
those Crimes, it is the wish of the Tribunal that I should
make a very brief statement on behalf of the Tribunal.
This International Military Tribunal has been established
pursuant to the Agreement of London, dated the 8th of
August, 1945, and the Charter of the Tribunal annexed
thereto. The purpose for which the Tribunal has been
established is stated in Article I of the Charter to be the
just and prompt trial and punishment of the Major War
Criminals of the European Axis.
The signatories to the Agreement and Charter are the
Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, the Government of the United States of
America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic
and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics.
The Committee of the Chief Prosecutors, appointed by the
four signatories, have settled the final designation of the
War Criminals to be tried by the Tribunal, and have approved
the indictment on which the present defendants stand charged
here today.
On Thursday, the 18th of October, 1945, in Berlin, the
indictment was lodged with the Tribunal and a copy of that
indictment in German has been furnished to each defendant,
and has been in his possession for more than thirty days.
All the defendants are represented by counsel. In almost all
cases the counsel appearing for the defendants have been
chosen by the defendants themselves, but in cases where
counsel could not be obtained the Tribunal has itself
selected suitable counsel agreeable to the defendant.
The Tribunal has heard with great satisfaction of the steps
which have been taken by the Chief Prosecutors to make
available to defending counsel the numerous documents upon
which the prosecution rely, with the aim of giving to the
defendants every possibility for a just defence.
The trial which is now about to begin is unique in the
history of the jurisprudence of the world and it is of
supreme importance to millions of people all over the globe.
For these reasons, there is laid upon everybody who takes
any part in this trial a solemn responsibility to discharge
his duties without fear or favour, in accordance with the
sacred principles of law and justice.
The four signatories having invoked the judicial process, it
is the duty of all concerned to see that the trial in no way
departs from those principles and traditions which alone
give justice its authority and the place it ought to occupy
in the affairs of all civilised states.
This trial is a public trial in the fullest sense of those
words, and I must, therefore, remind the public that the
Tribunal will insist upon the complete maintenance of order
and decorum, and will take the strictest measures to enforce
it. It only remains for me to direct, in accordance with the
provisions of the Charter, that the indictment shall now be
read.
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MR. SIDNEY ALDERMAN: May it please the Tribunal:
INDICTMENT
I. The United States of America, the French Republic, the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the undersigned,
Robert H. Jackson, Francois de Menthon, Hartley Shawcross
and R. A. Rudenko, duly appointed to represent their
respective Governments in the investigation of the charges
against and the prosecution of the major War Criminals,
pursuant to the Agreement of London, dated 8th August, I945,
and the Charter of this Tribunal annexed thereto, hereby
accuse as guilty, in the respects hereinafter set forth, of
Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against
Humanity, and of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit those
Crimes, all as defined in the Charter of the Tribunal, and
accordingly name as defendants in this cause and as indicted
on the counts hereinafter set out: HERMANN WILHELM GOERING,
RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM
KEITEL, ERNST KALTENBRUNNER, ALFRED ROSENBERG, HANS FRANK,
WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR
SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP VON BOHLEN UND HALBACH, KARL DOENITZ,
ERICH RAEDER, BALDUR VON SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED
JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ VON PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS-INQUART,
ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN VON NEURATH and HANS FRITZSCHE,
individually and as members of any of the Groups or
Organisations next hereinafter named.
II. The following are named as Groups or Organisations
(since dissolved) which should be declared criminal by
reason of their aims and the means used for the
accomplishment thereof, and in connection with the
conviction of such of the named defendants as were members
thereof: DIE REICHSREGIERUNG (REICH CABINET); DAS KORPS DER
POLITISCHEN LEITER DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCFIEN
ARBEITERPARTEI (LEADERSHIP CORPS OF THE NAZI PARTY); DIE
SCHUTZSTAFFELN DER NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHEN DEUTSCHEN
ARBEITERPARTEI (commonly known as the "SS") and including
the SICHERHEITSDIENST (commonly known as the "SD"); DIE
GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (SECRET STATE POLICE), (commonly known
as the "GESTAPO"); DIE STURMABTEILUNGEN DER N.S.D.A.P.
(commonly known as the "SA"); and the GENERAL STAFF and the
HIGH COMMAND of the GERMAN ARMED FORCES. The identity and
membership of the Groups or Organisations referred to in the
foregoing titles are hereinafter in Appendix B more
particularly defined.
COUNT ONE-THE COMMON PLAN OR CONSPIRACY
(Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (a))
III. Statement of the Offence
All the defendants, with divers other persons, during a
period of years preceding 8th May, 1945, participated as
leaders', organisers, instigators or accomplices in the
formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to
commit, or which involved the commission of, Crimes against
Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, as defined
in the Charter of this Tribunal, and, in accordance with the
provisions of the Charter, are individually responsible for
their own acts and for all acts committed by any persons in
the execution of such plan or conspiracy. The common plan or
conspiracy embraced the commission of Crimes against Peace,
in that the defendants planned, prepared, initiated and
waged wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation
of international treaties, agreements or assurances. In the
development and course of the common plan or conspiracy it
came to embrace the commission of War Crimes, in that it
contemplated, and the defendants determined upon and carried
out, ruthless wars against countries and populations, in
violation of the rules and customs of war, including as
typical and systematic means by which the wars were
prosecuted, murder, ill-treatment, deportation for slave
labour and for other purposes of civilian populations of
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occupied territories, murder and ill-treatment of prisoners
of war and of persons on the high seas, the taking and
killing of hostages, the plunder of public and private
property, the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and
villages, and devastation not justified by military
necessity. The common plan or conspiracy contemplated and
came to embrace as typical and systematic, and the
defendants determined upon and committed, Crimes against
Humanity, both within Germany and within occupied
territories, including murder, extermination, enslavement,
deportation and other inhumane acts committed against
civilian populations before and during the war, and
persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, in
execution of the plan for preparing and prosecuting
aggressive or illegal wars, many of such acts and
persecutions being violations of the domestic laws of the
countries where perpetrated.
IV. Particulars of the nature and development of the common
plan or conspiracy
(A) NAZI PARTY AS THE CENTRAL CORE OF THE COMMON PLAN OR
CONSPIRACY
In 1921 Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader or Fuehrer of
the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National
Socialist German Workers Party) also known as the Nazi
Party, which had been founded in Germany in 1920. He
continued as such throughout the period covered by this
Indictment. The Nazi Party, together with certain of its
subsidiary organisations, became the instrument of cohesion
among the defendants and their co-conspirators and an
instrument for the carrying out of the aims and purposes of
their conspiracy. Each defendant became a member of the Nazi
Party and of the conspiracy, with knowledge of their aims
and purposes, or, with such knowledge, became an accessory
to their aims and purposes at some stage of the development
of the conspiracy.
(B) COMMON OBJECTIVES AND METHODS OF CONSPIRACY
The aims and purposes of the Nazi Party and of the
defendants and divers other persons from time to time
associated as leaders, members, supporters or adherents of
the Nazi Party (hereinafter called collectively the "Nazi
conspirators") were, or came to be, to accomplish the
following by any means deemed opportune, including unlawful
means, and contemplating ultimate resort to threat of force,
force and aggressive war:
to abrogate and overthrow the Treaty of Versailles and its
restrictions upon the military armament and activity of
Germany;
to acquire the territories lost by Germany as the result of
the World War of 1914-1918 and other territories in Europe
asserted by the Nazi conspirators to be occupied principally
by so-called "racial Germans";
to acquire still further territories in continental Europe
and elsewhere claimed by the Nazi conspirators to be
required by the "racial Germans" as "Lebensraum," or living
space, all at the expense of neighbouring and other
countries.
The aims and purposes of the Nazi conspirators were not
fixed or static, but evolved and expanded as they acquired
progressively greater power and became able to make more
effective application of threats of force and threats of
aggressive war. When their expanding aims and purposes
became finally so great as to provoke such strength of
resistance as could be overthrown only by armed force and
aggressive war, and not simply by the opportunistic methods
theretofore used, such as fraud, deceit, threats,
intimidation, fifth column activities and propaganda, the
Nazi conspirators deliberately planned, determined upon and
launched their aggressive wars and wars in violation of
international treaties, agreements and assurances by the
phases and steps hereinafter more particularly described.
(C) DOCTRINAL TECHNIQUES OF THE COMMON PLAN OR CONSPIRACY
To incite others to join in the common plan or conspiracy,
and as a means of securing for the Nazi conspirators the
highest degree of control over the German community, they
put forth, disseminated, and exploited certain doctrines,
among others, as follows :-
1. That persons of so-called "German blood" (as specified
by the Nazi
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conspirators) were a "master race" and were accordingly
entitled to subjugate, dominate or exterminate other
"races" and peoples
2. That the German people should be ruled under the
Fuehrerprinzip (leadership principle) according to which
power was to reside in a Fuehrer from whom sub-leader were
to derive authority in a hierarchical order, each sub-leader
to owe unconditional obedience to his immediate superior but
to be absolute in his own sphere of jurisdiction; and the
power of the leadership was to be unlimited, extending to
all phases of public and private life
3. That war was a noble and necessary activity of Germans
4. That the leadership of the Nazi Party, as the sole bearer
of the foregoing and other doctrines of the Nazi Party, was
entitled to shape the structure, policies and practices of
the German State and all related institutions, to direct and
supervise activities of all individuals within the State,
and to destroy all opponents.
(D) THE ACQUIRING OF TOTALITARIAN CONTROL OF GERMANY:
POLITICAL
1. First steps in acquisition of control of State
machineryIn order to accomplish their aims and purposes, the
Nazi conspirators prepared to seize totalitarian control
over Germany to secure that no effective resistance against
them could arise within Germany itself. After the failure of
the Munich Putsch of 1923 aimed at the overthrow of the
Weimar Republic by direct action, the Nazi conspirators set
out through the Nazi Party to undermine and capture the
German Government by "legal" forms supported by terrorism.
They created and utilised, as a Party formation, Die
Sturmabteilungen (SA), a semimilitary, voluntary
Organisation of young men trained for and committed to the
use of violence, whose mission was to make the Party the
master of the streets.
2. Control acquired
On 30th January, 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of the
German Republic. After the Reichstag fire of 28th February,
1933, clauses of the Weimar constitution guaranteeing
personal liberty, freedom of speech, of the Press, of
association and assembly were suspended. The Nazi
conspirators secured the passage by the Reichstag of a "law
for the Protection of the People and the Reich" giving
Hitler and the members of his then cabinet plenary powers of
legislation. The Nazi conspirators retained such powers
after having changed the members of the cabinet. The
conspirators caused all political parties except the Nazi
Party to be prohibited. They caused the Nazi Party to be
established as a para-governmental Organisation with
extensive and extraordinary privileges.
3. Consolidation of control
Thus possessed of the machinery of the German State, the
Nazi conspirators set about the consolidation of their
position of power within Germany, the extermination of
potential internal resistance and the placing of the German
nation on a military footing.
(a) The Nazi conspirators reduced the Reichstag to a body of
their own nominees and curtailed the freedom of popular
elections throughout the country. They transformed the
several states, provinces and municipalities, which had
formerly exercised semiautonomous powers, into hardly more
than administrative organs of the Central Government. They
united the offices of the President and the Chancellor in
the person Of Hitler, instituted a widespread purge of civil
servants, and severely restricted the independence of the
judiciary and rendered it subservient to Nazi ends. The
conspirators greatly enlarged existing State and Party
organisations, established a network of new State and Party
organisations, and "coordinated" State agencies with the
Nazi Party and its branches and affiliates, with the result
that German life was dominated by Nazi doctrine and practice
and progressively mobilised for the accomplishment of their
aims.
(b) in order to make their rule secure from attack and to
instil fear in the hearts of the German people, the Nazi
conspirators established and extended
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a system of terror against opponents and supposed or
suspected opponents of the regime. They imprisoned such
persons without judicial process, holding them in
"protective custody" and concentration camps, and subjected
them to persecution, degradation, despoilment, enslavement,
torture and murder. These concentration camps were
established early in 1933 under the direction of the
defendant Goering and expanded as a fixed part of the
terroristic policy and method of the conspirators and used
by them for the commission of the Crimes against Humanity
hereinafter alleged. Among the principal agencies utilised
in the perpetration of these crimes were the SS and the
Gestapo, which, together with other favoured branches or
agencies of the State and Party, were permitted to operate
without restraint of law.
(c) The Nazi conspirators conceived that, in addition to the
suppression of distinctively political opposition, it was
necessary to suppress or exterminate certain other movements
or groups which they regarded as obstacles to their
retention of total control in Germany, and to the aggressive
aims of the conspiracy abroad.

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